Project 21: New Visions

As an African-American and the proud daughter of a woman who was a leader in the New York civil rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s, I am very sensitive to the issue of discrimination. However, I disagree with the Reverend Jesse Jackson's knee-jerk reaction to events in Decatur, Illinois. Officials there applied a zero-tolerance policy against school violence, where seven black students were expelled for engaging in mob violence last year. A wiser move for the Reverend Jackson would have been to inquire if the expelled students were receiving a high-quality education. A direct correlation exists between the quality ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published May 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. If you went to public school any time in the last 20 years, you can be forgiven if you think slavery is a uniquely American and Southern experience. That belief, fueled by the political correctness movement, is dead wrong. The evil system we call slavery existed long before the United States was ever thought of, and occurred everywhere in the world. The ancient Greeks ...
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I'm sitting here, chillin' on the couch. I'm not paying much attention to the news on TV, but the Million Mom March is getting all the pub today. I'm listening to what they have to say, and I wish the world could be like that. I wish the world was a perfect place; no gang violence, no innocent children dying, no need for guns. Million Mom Marchers wants stricter gun regulations. They believe it is going to stop children from getting killed in gun-related incidences. The more I think about all those issues, the more it makes me think about ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published May 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. In light of reports that African-American and Latino unemployment is at an all-time low, I'd like to reflect on some things. In 1994, when the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in decades, I wrote a commentary for the Oklahoma Eagle newspaper in Tulsa entitled, "Time To Put Up Or Shut Up for Republicans." I suggested that if the noise Republicans ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published May 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Controversy is running rampant in Atlanta's black community and elsewhere, but I can't understand why. Jamil Al-Amin has been charged with the murder of Fulton County Deputy Ricky Kinchen. Deputy Kinchen, along with Deputy Aldranon English - both officers, by the way, are black - were shot as they tried to serve a warrant on Al-Amin for theft and impersonating an officer in mid-March ...
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Have you ever been the victim of environmental racism? You probably have and not even known it. And, more than likely, it was the government that discriminated against you. If you ask someone from a liberal environmental group like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club to define environmental racism, they'll say it is when a big business comes into a poor or minority area and takes advantage of the community because it has more political clout than the residents. An example might be that a garbage dump was intentionally placed in a majority-black neighborhood simply because the people who lived there ...
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By now, the Elian Gonzalez saga is all over but for the shouting. I suspect that Elian will soon be headed to Havana to sit on Fidel Castro's knee. Perhaps then he'll be allowed to live a normal Cuban child's life. That, by the way, means being taken from his father at the age of 11 to work in the sugar cane fields until he's 18. Frankly, I wish that Fidel Castro would've sent someone to pick up the boy back in November before this whole thing mutated into a made-for-television miniseries. However, what's done is done, and the custody ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published April 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. With the "Super Tuesday" primaries clearing the road ahead to the real super Tuesday in November, the battle lines between Al Gore and George W. Bush are feverishly being drawn. Strategists are huddling to work out how each man can win the minds and souls of the voting public. At this early juncture, handicappers would have to give the edge to Vice President Gore ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published April 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. I rarely get agitated at works of art. But The Cider House Rules movie is a notable exception. Its wretchedness was only enhanced by author John Irving's self-serving speech accepting the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the recent Academy Awards. That there hasn't been more anger speaks to the selectivity of political outrage. In the movie, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) has been raised ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published April 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. The information age is here. Computers bring an exciting new frontier for research, commerce and educational opportunity. It also brings a new angle on victimization. It's called the "digital divide." It assumes that millions of poor and black Americans are left behind while others enjoy the opportunities brought by the Internet. Never missing an opportunity to expand the role - and subsequent control - ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published March 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Are you sick and tired of all the ruckus and brouhaha over that stupid Confederate battle flag? True, flying the flag above South Carolina's state capitol is not about heritage. It was a racist response by southern "yellow dog" Democrats in 1962 to challenge the growing power of the civil rights movement. Let me remind you that it was the southern Democrats who not ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published March 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Just before the holidays last year, the aspirations of thousands of Cleveland schoolchildren were put on hold when federal judge Solomon Oliver ruled that a Cleveland school choice program was a violation of the separation of church and state and was therefore unconstitutional. That's a shame because Cleveland's four-year-old voucher program gives needy families with children in kindergarten through sixth grade up to $2,500 ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published March 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. She's angry. She's naming names. She's rhyming and rapping and reciting. And she's naming more names. With titles like "Gun Control is Racist," "Liberal Democrats are Racist" and "Liberal Democrat Education is Wack," it's obvious that this lady has got a beef against liberals, left-wing politicians and specifically, liberal Democrats. Most of us recognize rap music by its characteristic angry bravado and preoccupation with ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published March 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. When Willie Jones, the African-American owner of a Nashville landscaping business, purchased an airline ticket on February 27, 1991, little did he know that this seemingly routine purchase would lead to a two-year legal nightmare that nearly cost him his business. Jones's "mistake" was paying cash for his ticket to Houston. He was going there to purchase plants and shrubbery for his business. Jones ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published February 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Court, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Will all the strides made by blacks in the 20th Century be lost in this new millennium? It would seem so. With blacks focusing on rooting out the white man's so-called hatred of us, and few on immediate problems like our kids and our communities, we are going into this new century with all the vigor of a rubber band when we need a ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published February 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Court, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Leon Harris, a black commentator from CNN who was covering the Iowa caucuses, closed his report with a lighthearted bite: On the eve of the vote, he had been approached by two people who asked if he was a bodyguard. Bodyguard? He was a professional journalist reporting on the Iowa caucuses. But that is what it is like to be black in America. People ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published February 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Court, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. The NAACP seems more interested in fictional black characters than real black people. Kweisi Mfume, president of the Baltimore-based civil rights group, has generated headlines lately for pressuring the four TV networks to address what he calls a "virtual whitewash in programming." Last summer, Mfume threatened to boycott the networks "because none of the 26 new shows slated for the fall season have a ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published February 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Court, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Imagine yourself as a child without a home, parents, siblings or anything to call your own. Think of the torment and feelings of despair of not being wanted and unloved. Then one day a caring, loving couple comes along that wants to envelop you in their arms, give you the home you never had and provide the opportunity for you to become all that ...
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NBC's Today show recently brought tears to my eyes. In disbelief, I watched our nation's mainstream media honor Margaret Sanger, the woman who single-handedly gave birth to Planned Parenthood and the abortion movement. The movement that is responsible for literally millions of terminated souls, including more than 1,200 abortions of African-American children each day! As Katie Couric heralded this bigoted, racist woman as a heroine for the millennium, my jaw hit the floor. Sanger was described as vivacious, warm, healing and powerfully driven. Ellen Chesler, a Sanger biographer, said Sanger wanted simply to liberate "women to experience their sexuality free ...
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Donna Brazile, Al Gore's presidential campaign manager, recently sought to breathe new life into the foundering campaign by playing the race card. She attacked top black Republicans Congressman J.C. Watts and retired General Colin Powell, charging that they and their party have no programs to feed poor children and would rather take pictures with them than feed them. Both Watts and Powell fired off angry letters to Gore, who defended Brazile's actions. Later, however, Gore sought to smooth things over with a telephone call to Powell to say he had nothing but respect for Powell and his work with American ...
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